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bewilderedbuck · 2 years

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Devi vs. David: aka a comprehensive list of every single time ben gross has referred to devi as one or the other (season three edition)

here it is, the post you all have been waiting for! first off, if you missed them, please check out parts one and two where i talk about ben's use of devi vs. david in seasons one and two. and once again, this is just a list documenting every single instance in season three where ben refers to her as either devi or david with context + insight. i am making this mostly for my own purposes. also, some of the netflix captions are incorrect for this season (for example in 3x05 when he sees her at the coffeehouse for the first time) so if the font looks different on some of the screencaps, it's because i captioned them myself.

let's get started.

the first instance in season 3 we see him refer to her at all, it’s as david; the first instance in season 1 was also a david, but this time instead of being used as a mark of rivalry, it is used as a mark of friendship. we see ben use david a lot this season, during what i affectionately refer to as the benvi besties era. but here, in this instance, it isn’t just used to establish their friendship. i mean, it sort of is i guess, but in two separate directions: the first being towards devi, and the second towards ben himself. setting those boundaries in his head, so to speak, because this is right after she tells him things are going great with paxton.

another friendship david! i really love how they interact in this scene: he’s being so genuine when he says this, and her lil smile afterwards? priceless. the way he uses david as a term of endearment will never get old to me.

obviously devi isn’t present in this scene, so it makes sense he doesn’t refer to her as david, but i just wanna point out that ben is a liar liar pants on fire!! while yes, ben and devi are solidly friends, he is still obviously harboring feelings for her. even his own girlfriend can see that. he is so quick to assure aneesa that he does not still have feelings for devi, but the way he talks about her here (insulting, but also sounding so fond, literally ben and devi’s love language!) and even like directly referencing what her freaking backpack looks like (because he notices everything about her, he can’t not notice her) like…dude. you are not making a good case for yourself.

also, this is not particularly relevant because, again, she isn't in this scene, but i still want to make the observation just like i did in part two that ben has never called her david around aneesa. there is no way this isn’t intentional. he calls her david in front of the rest of their friends, but if aneesa is present, it’s devi or nothing at all.

continuing the trend of ben referring to her as david as a term of endearment / mark of friendship. there was no reason for him to put david in the text; he could have left it at “Holy shit! Did you do this?” and the message would still have come across. but he wants to add that extra layer to it, that extra oomph by referring to her as something that is just for them. just for their friendship. something special they have that no one else does. (also ben for fucks sake stop texting the love of your life for like two fucking seconds and pay attention to your actual girlfriend. jesus christ.)

this is the first time he refers to her post-time skip - not that that really matters, i just wanted to point it out. ben is, as he says, four beers deep at this point, and they’re in the presence of friends. it just makes sense for the nickname to slip out. eleanor and fab also make no remarks about it (eleanor didn’t in the 3x02 troll shenanigans instance, either, pre-time skip), so they know it’s harmless.

okay so in this one, the netflix captions are actually wrong — the captions say devi but ben very clearly says david, so i captioned this one myself. anyways. i just want to point out. benjamin. came to the coffeehouse. just because he heard devi say she was going to kiss someone there. you are not slick, dude. anyways. “Are you the charity we’re raising money for tonight?” is a callback to 2x05, obviously: “Well, this is a charity event, and you are, after all, a charity case.” banter. classic benvi banter. this isn’t a friendship david, even though they are friends. and the thing is, ben knows why he’s here. he’s not delusional; i don’t think he walked into the coffeehouse expecting for devi to kiss him. he was hopeful, maybe. but using david in a more teasing context as opposed to a term of endearment here, once again, sets those boundaries in his head. it’s never just as simple as whether he says david or devi; it’s also the tone he uses, how he says it.

condescending king!!! okay no but for real. he uses devi here to exaggerate — i mean, he literally just called her david not even two minutes prior. it’s not a real dig at her, not a real insult, and she knows that. and honestly, i think he’s using their banter in this episode as some sort of armor, because he knows he wants to kiss her, and knows that he’s not going to, so it’s just…easier to be a dick. he keeps his guard up that way. yeah, he flirts by being an asshole, too, and while this episode does have flirty vibes (let’s be real they both wanted to kiss each other the whole damn time), i think ben is just mostly on the defense. especially after that “Don’t fall for a friend,” comment he makes to aneesa later on in the episode. (also, this is the first time this season he refers to her as devi to her face — the only other time so far he’s called her devi was when he was attempting to assure aneesa he didn’t have feelings for devi anymore.)

really just reiterating a lot of what i said about the first instance of david during the coffeehouse. trying to make light of the situation, because really, we know he’s already jealous of whoever it is she’ll be kissing tonight, and he knows it’s not gonna be him.

more condescending ben! keeping up with the david here, same reasons as above, except it’s his second sentence here i really wanna talk about: “Most guys at drama club events are either dragged here by their girlfriends or are looking for boyfriends.” like WOW okay first of all, way to stereotype, but ALSO, i’m 100% convinced he said that because, you know, he doesn’t want her kissing anyone else.

this just feels like such a soft moment for me. this is right before 3x06, which is the episode ben decides to finally start to try moving on, but really, i think he started thinking about it in this episode, right at this moment. this “good night, devi,” almost reads like a “goodbye” to me -- not a real one, obviously, but a goodbye to the hopes he might have had for rekindling their romance. he’s going to keep on loving her (he can’t not love her), but he’s done letting himself be miserable about it.

"...would’ve been the end of our journey together.”

ok once again it is obvious he does not refer to her as david when she is not present + even if he did it would not be to paxton but anyways. what i wanna talk about here is how ben has moved on from the cheating incident. i don’t think he’s like, fully 100% over it obviously, and he’s def not over her, but so casually referencing it to devi’s other ex-boyfriend and there not being a hint of malice towards her in his voice? at this point it’s been probably about a year and a half, give or take, since the two-timing. yes, she broke his heart, but he’s had time to move past that aspect of it. and you could argue that he casually references it because in this scene he’s in one of the most embarrassing situations he’s ever been in and is trying to make light of the situation, but i think it’s more than that. he’s accepted that devi made a big fucking mistake. he’s moved on from it. not from her, not really, but from what she did to him.

okay, yes, this comment comes across as sort of asshole-ish on the surface, but honestly? this is one if the nicest, most genuine things ben has said to her all season. i’m not even kidding when i say that. here, samberg directly says “This would normally prompt a twinge of jealousy in Ben, but if last night taught him anything, it was that he needed to let go of whatever caused him pain.” and like yeah okay comparing devi to the literal shit that was stuck in his gastrointestinal tract is….not great, but i see where he’s coming from. ben is making the conscious decision to stop hopelessly pining after devi. obviously, those feelings are still there, they are not going away just because he’s decided to start moving on. but he’s at peace now with the fact that they missed their chance (or so he thinks). david, once again, used as a mark of friendship. this is ben’s way of saying, “I hope this works out for you, friend. You deserve to be happy.”

"...Don’t be insufferable about this, but you may have been right to think that we can win.”

okay, real quick, can we talk about how chill ben was with the possibility of losing? season two ben could never. ANYWAYS. of course he has to at least sort of be a dick (“Don’t be insufferable about this…”) but he genuinely means it. it’s a praise and an encouragement wrapped into one (up until the paralegals and faux-jeopardy computer stroll in) because they’ve been doing so well during the tournament. he has faith in her. david being used to get her attention here before he gives her that praise makes it come across even more genuine, i think, because this is ben we are talking about here and, again, david is a term of endearment for them!

"...if you aren’t too busy making demented faces into your phone.”

BANTER like yes ok he’s genuinely annoyed here. but. this whole scene just oozes besties banter. don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a friendship david. it reads very close to their s1 enemies back-and-forth but there’s also that extra layer underneath, laced with the littlest bit of affection, because he doesn’t hate her like he did back then. (also, they’re working on a project together instead of competing for the best in class. season 1 pre-model un benvi could never.)

he's trying to soften the blow of what he’s about to tell her about rhyah and des; obviously it doesn’t really work, because she still flips out on him lol, but he tries. he doesn’t even banter back when she tells him that his outfit is ugly. he’s heartbroken that he has to tell her this. he wanted so badly for this to work out for her. for her to be happy. but he has to do right by her, has to tell her because she deserves to know the truth. uses david to soften the sharpness of that truth.

david once again being used in a friendly context; his tone here is softening from the petty banter they had just been engaging in. telling her it’s “dumb not to go,” using david in the middle of that sentence for emphasis, but somehow he’s still not coming across as a dick here. he knows how impactful it would be for her to go, and tells her as much. but…

cut me in half. throw me off a cliff. i may never emotionally recover from this. ben being so vulnerable here, probably the second most vulnerable we’ve ever seen him (the first being 3x06 with his father). telling her he doesn’t want her to go, that he’ll miss her, because he wants her in his life. even if they aren’t together. even if they never become anything more than friends again. he likes having her around. wants to keep her around. and he isn’t afraid to say it anymore. david here being used to, once again, establish that closeness between them, that closeness to his best friend (even if it’s never actually stated that she is his best friend, she is, she is). david being used because this is just them, just for them, words that cannot be left unsaid.

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non-plutonian-druid · 2 years

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hello all i have an absolute monster of a meta essay for you that I like to call “The Umbrella Academy is so close to saying something about the concept of nuclear families and if the writers are doing it on purpose its going to be beautiful”. Its almost 2k words.

For the record, since i think its relevant and greatly informs my thoughts, i am a nonpartnering aromantic person and i strongly believe that the idea that a family is a pair of romantic partners and their children needs to go. Thats uh. Bigger than the scope of this essay. But it does inform a lot of my thoughts on this particular theme in the umbrella academy so there you go.

First, some semantics: technically the only family member to actually get to the point of “nuclear family” is Allison, who then divorces her romantic partner. Only her and, technically, Diego, have kids. Most of the others have love interests but because of the beauty of being different people with different life experiences, their particular romances often do not fall specifically into the the box “nuclear family”, though some could eventually given time (and some may not ever). That being said, associated with the term “nuclear family” is a pattern, historically, of children growing up and finding a romantic partner and moving out into a single-family home, where they have children raised only and specifically by them and their romantic partner, and they thus grow apart from their siblings and parents. This is a pattern that is held, at least in America, as The Best pattern, and anyone who does not achieve it is failing in some way. And that pattern, of leaving behind the family you grew up in to make a home and a family with a romantic parter? That’s everywhere in TUA. I would argue that the tension between the siblings’ urges to follow it, and between their urge to reconnect with each other, is one of the main themes and a main source of tension through all of the show.

Pre season 1, most of the Hargreeves build their own lives after escaping from Reginald, but only Allison creates her own family. Then, in season 1, a few relevant things happen

One, Allison is separated from her daughter, and desperately wants to return to her. Returning to her daughter inherently and repeatedly means separating herself from her siblings and returning to a family unit that does not involve them. I am not arguing that this is a bad thing, or that Allison should not be with her daughter; I am pointing out that the family Allison has with Claire is separate from the one she has with her siblings (There is one notable exception to this, based on my memory; Allison asks Luther to join her on her flight to LA in the Day That Wasn’t, after they rekindle their romantic relationship).

Two, Viktor begins a relationship with Leonard, who deliberately isolates him from them, which does fit the pattern but is kinda unfair to use to serve my point lol

Three, Klaus meets Dave. Klaus has the power to return to 2019 at any point he wants, and could even bring Dave if he so chose, but remains in the 60s away from the modern day and his family with Dave until Dave tragically dies.

and Four: the world threatens to end and the umbrella academy tries, badly, to fix it by coming together once again. Allison is constantly torn between wanting to help save the world and wanting to be with her daughter, Viktor is manipulated away from his family (not that the hargreeves probably needed the help lol), and Klaus breaks away entirely to spend months away from them with a man he falls in love with. Bad things? Not necessarily, apart from Viktor’s shitty boyfriend being abusive. But the beginning of a pattern.

Season 2. The Hargreeves have all had months or years in Dallas, and many of them are beginning new lives with new families.

Allison, once again, is married. Viktor has a blossoming relationship with a woman he loves and is devoted to taking care of her son, who he loves too. Diego has acquired a love interest as well (Lila my beloved), Klaus is trying to prevent his past-future boyfriend from enlisting, and Luther is trying to figure himself out. Obviously a major tension in this season is between Five trying to round up his siblings, and his siblings’ prioritizing their lives in Dallas, which they’ve built with hard work and are just getting used to. This does not involve a tension between a nuclear (or nuclear-ish) family and their siblings for all of them, but it does for Allison especially, and Viktor, and to an extent, Klaus. An important thing to note here is that the siblings are not averse to reuniting, as they often were in season 1. They have been worried about each other! They have been looking! and yet even once they reconnect their little lives stay separate. They talk about it, but do not invite their siblings into their lives. They meet love interests offhand, but do not integrate. All of them, even when trying to reconnect, still have two separate lives that they have to choose between.

Season 3. Oh boy.

perhaps not “oh boy” for the reasons that you think. The reason its “oh boy” is because there are three parts to how i will talk about s3: The romantic interests-slash-nuclearish families, the way the hargreeves talk about their own family, and The Ending.

First, Allison again. Allison begins the season once again wishing desperately to find Claire, and mourning leaving Ray behind. She leaves almost immediately, and gets to LA only to find that Claire does not exist. Getting to a world where Claire exists, or Ray exists, or both, becomes her motivation for the rest of the season, pitting her against multiple of her family members. Fair! She is more worried about the family she has lost than the family that is right in front of her and fine, which is perfectly reasonable. And obviously, she is considerably more invested in her toddler’s well being than her adult brothers’. What I point out is that once again, her family with her siblings and the families she’s made are separate entities from each other, and this fact is forcing her to choose between them.

Second, Luther. Luther’s relationship with Sloane begins similarly enough to previous ones in the show- Luther is making a choice between a romantic partnership and his siblings, it causes tension, the romantic partnership and his siblings form two different units and never the twain shall meet. But. Then Sloane gets folded into the Hargreeves siblings- or rather the Umbrellas, since she’s a Hargreeves too lol. Sloane is... not a character, no offense, but I’m presuming that she is supposed to be integrated with the Hargreeves since that is the impression of the writers intentions that I get and for the sake of being nice to them I will pretend that they succeeded. Interesting! A romantic partnership that is integrated into their family, and not existing as a separate one adjacent to the rest of them! That has never happened before. Even Allison and Luther’s romance is not Part of the family formed by the rest of the siblings; it is, narratively, treated as something separate

Three, Diego. And Lila. Once again, a change of pace. Lila comes here for Diego only at first, but quickly is embroiled in the Plot and the Family. Lila has always been more integrated with the family than other love interests, if only because she has much more plot relevance than most of them, but even then her primary real interactions have been with the Handler, outside of the family entirely; or Diego, with the occasional exception of trying to murder Five. This season she is fully and completely part of the family, and has one on one, meaningful interactions with not only Diego but Allison, Five, and Klaus as well.

Two love interests in one season that arent separate from the rest of the family, huh?

So what about the way the Hargreeves talk about their family this season?

Allison begins the season once again wishing desperately to find Claire, and leaves almost immediately. Viktor encourages her to leave, believing that Claire still exists and that finding her will help Allison. To do so, he encourages her to find her “real family”.

Later, Klaus goes on a roadtrip to find his biological mother. On the way, he commiserates with Five about their lives, and they both wonder if what they have could even be called a family.

Contrasting, there are multiple scenes on multiple occasions in season 3 alone where Allison, Five, Luther-- all of them-- declare their love for each other. They’re a family. No matter what.

Hm.

Now The Ending.

The Ending is one of the saddest parts of the show to me, and makes me desperately hope that The Umbrella Academy gets a season 4, because The Ending leaves the siblings utterly divided.

Luther is searching for Sloane.

Diego and LIla are presumably going to build a life together with their future child.

Allison is all the way in LA, living an idyllic dream where both Ray and Claire are alive and returned to her.

Even the remaining siblings, who do not have lives laid out for them, have walked away from one another to return to normal, nonpowered lives. If the story ends here, in the tension between the family you grow up with and the family you build with a partner, the siblings have prioritized their own lives, and the family they’ve spent three seasons trying to reconstruct falls apart under the weight of.... living a normal life.

What I want from the Umbrella Academy, what I hope we get if there is ever a fourth season, is the Hargreeves figuring out what family works for them. They have constantly been pulled between their siblings and their own lives, and have almost never allowed the two to mix. I find the story of the nuclear family, where all people are expected to find a partner and have children and for that and only that to make a normal life, to be depressing and isolating. I desparately want the Hargreeves, who have been trying so hard to reconnect, to find a better story for themselves. Every season so far has been building a stage for this storyline. Season 3 is literally ending with many of the Hargreeves getting idyllic little family units while walking away from each other, and if that doesn’t spell “we’re going to be Dealing With That” then I don’t know what does. They really could be telling a story that says “Leaving the family you grew up in behind doesn’t have to be the only answer”. It could be so good. But do i trust the writers to realize what they’re doing, or is their writing just littered with unexamined assumptions about how families are structured? I just don’t know.

#tua #the umbrella academy #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #viktor hargreeves #i mention ben exactly zero times so he doesnt get tagged but hes here in spirit #ha #lila pitts #i dont think anything after the first five tags shows up in the main tags but whatever #writing this made my brain melt out of my ears and then i had to edit it? gross #i didnt have to edit it but i did want it to be like. readable and not complete nonsense #i could do an epilogue about five who also kind of has a little family off with delores #that is simultaneously necessary for his sanity and also always always second to his siblings #but i didnt really have anything to say about it other then 'thats a thing that happens!' so i didnt include it #not that this whole thing is THAT much more than 'thats a thing that happens!' but #anyway when talking about all this 'the little families they build with a romantic partner' and #'their lives they build away from their siblings that may or may not include a romantic partner'#are easy to get tangled up and i think i fell into that a few times #but im specifically trying to get at the common narrative of leaving beihind your old family to make a new one with a romantic partner #and how that doesnt need to be the only narrative to exist #you dont need to leave your siblings behind to build a family #the two do not need to be separate #they can be if that is what is good for your life #but they do not have to be #tua s3 spoilers #s3 spoilers #tua spoilers

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